Sermon: The Practice of Reflection

Text:  Proverbs 2:1-11; Matthew 22:34-40

Date: January 13, 2008

Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, EagleHarbor Congregational Church

            “Human beings construct meaning as spiders make webs,” observes writer Catherine Bateson.  “This is how we survive, our primary evolutionary business.”  We are both meaning seekers and meaning makers.  We try to discover the purpose of our lives and make sense of our experiences.[1]  The Christian practice of Reflection points to this process of making sense of our lives as people of faith. 

            “Reflection” is not one of those words whose meaning is immediately apparent.  What does it mean to reflect on something, or to practice reflection?  It’s a soft sort of word, and a slow word.  Do you know what I mean?  You can’t “reflect” on something at ninety miles an hour.  You have to slow down, maybe even come to a complete halt, to reflect on the meaning of something.  Stillness is implied.

            I was out at our UCC camp Pilgrim Firs last spring for a retreat when I became fascinated with a reflection.  I had had a terrible night’s sleep and I was so tired as to be in a kind of altered state of consciousness which no amount of camp coffee could repair.  I didn’t have the attention span for an afternoon workshop so I wound up going outside on a very slow walk, resolving to just pay attention to the earth for a while.  After admiring the gorgeous mosses and fungi I had swept by at a great rate of speed the previous day I came to a stop next to a good sized mud puddle.  I won’t be able to describe what I saw there because there was a mystical dimension that defies words.  But I’ll give it a shot: The air was still, and I could see trees and sky reflected in the surface of this puddle, while at the same time I could see the rocks and mud and slug trails at the bottom.  As I gazed at the water it began to look as if the puddle was as deep as the trees were tall, and deeper still.  It looked like the trees were growing down into the water.  It was a little like one of those computer generated pictures popular a few years ago which had an image that would pop out if you looked at it cross-eyed for a while.  Remember how the three dimensional thing—spaceship or locomotive or eagle--would just leap off the page suddenly when your mind saw it?  The impression of depth in this puddle was a little like that.  Even though one part of my brain knew the puddle was only two or three inches deep, another part of my mind “saw” another dimension, as if there was another world right at my feet, and the puddle was the portal. 

            I’m mentioning this admittedly weird experience because I hope it evokes the meaning of Christian reflection.  Suppose the mud puddle represents your life.  Scientifically speaking, you could inventory what it’s made up of: mud, rocks, water, slug trails, bugs, bacteria, whatever.  But there is reflected in your life a world beyond you—the trees and the sun and the clouds representing the universe, God’s creative action and movement in the cosmos.  But God’s creativity is not merely mirrored in the surface of your life; if you can force yourself to be still and reflect on what is before you, you see that the Holy dimension plunges into the depths of your life, making your own little mud-puddle existence indescribably deep and connected to all that Is.

            I have no idea if that makes sense to anyone who was not standing mesmerized next to a puddle on a spring afternoon.  Let me turn to the more concrete and rational language of diagrams.  I have a book I’ve gotten a lot out of titled The Art of Theological Reflection by Patricia O’Connell Killen and John de Beer.  In it, the authors lay out a method of theological reflection designed to help Christians discover and construct meaning in their lives.  The introductory diagram is simple enough.  There’s one circle labeled “Experience.”  A second circle is labeled “Tradition.”  Bring the circles together so that they cross over but aren’t completely concentric.  The shaded area where they cross over is labeled “Theological Reflection.”  The diagram is intended to illustrate that the art of theological reflection is about bringing your life experience into deliberate conversation with your theological tradition.  Tradition includes scripture, theological writings, the teachings of the church, the stories of the saints, hymns, doctrines, creeds, denominational pronouncements, the practices of the church, and all that jazz. 

            Sometimes theological reflection is done rather spontaneously, when some aspect of your experience connects with your religious heritage and it pops into consciousness.  I recall a bright morning during seminary in Southern California when we were awakened to the sound of singing.  It had rained (a rare occurrence there) and the mountains that had been almost completely shrouded in smog were brilliantly out sparkling with new snow.  Our neighbor was standing on his balcony looking at them and singing “How Great Thou Art” at the top of his lungs.  He connected his experience of beauty with God’s greatness and thanks to his heritage, he found just the words to express his praise.  Or maybe some catastrophe has occurred in your life and you find yourself thinking you have just been swallowed up by Jonah’s whale and you’re in for a dark and uncomfortable journey. 

            Other times theological reflection has to be undertaken more conscientiously, more deliberately.  If you want to practice theological reflection there are a couple of impediments that need to be removed.  Killen and de Beer write about the problem of certitude.  We may long for a set of rules to direct our lives clearly and effectively.  We may even have come up with a given set of rules or perspectives that has worked in a stable time in our lives.  But when life thrusts us into unfamiliar territory or we meet people with very different perspectives, the rule by which we have lived may be challenged.  Sometimes people respond by hardening what they believe into a standpoint of certitude, in which we look at the unfamiliar only in terms of what we already believe.  “From certitude we can tolerate only that which fits into our predetermined categories.  If some aspect of the new landscape is too difficult to fit into the picture we wish to see, we bulldoze it until we are satisfied that the world is as we know it to be.”[2]  The authors give this example from a young woman’s description of her frustration with her father: “I feel so sorry for the nurses at the hospital.  Even though they are run off their feet, they go out of their way to pay special attention to my father and all he does is complain.  During the worst of his illness I stayed with him for hours on end, and I was struck by the combination of professional competence and caring that was shown by all the staff.  But to hear Dad tell it, he had fallen into the clutches of some incompetent time-servers who where only interested in their paychecks.  He is so certain that all institutions are oppressive that he is convinced he is being wretchedly cared for, without a scrap of evidence to support this opinion.”  When we operate exclusively out of a standpoint of certitude, we are unable to test a new experience against the view of life that we hold.  All sorts of certainties—theological, political, ideological—can have the effect of blocking reflection on new experiences by leading us to prematurely try to fit our experience into our traditional belief’s interpretive framework.  So a standpoint of total certitude has to go if one is to engage in fruitful theological reflection.

            Another impediment to theological reflection has to do with putting too much confidence not in the tradition side of the picture but in the experience side.  This is what Killen and de Beer name “the standpoint of self-assurance.”  When one is fed up with the frailty and fallibility of the traditions and the people around us, we may “decide only to trust ourselves, our own experience, how we think and feel now, in each new situation.  We choose to be our own compass, map, and guide and reject our need for any other.”  A physicist had an encounter with a taxi driver in Trinidad, who raised the question of how to get out of poverty.  The driver wanted to send his children to college.  He told the physicist that he was betting on the horses so he could get ahead.  When the physicist responded that betting on horses was not the most efficient way to accumulate resources, the taxi driver insisted that it was his way, that he saw no other way, and that it could work for him.  This is what happens when one is operating exclusively from self-assurance; we do not notice distortions or inaccuracies in our perspectives on life.[3]  We discount the way the wisdom of religious heritage and other sources of wisdom can expand our experience and correct distortions in our perception of it. 

            Both the standpoint of certitude and the standpoint of self-assurance protect us temporarily from feeling foolish, which everyone hates.  A certain amount of humility is required before one can engage in theological reflection.  A little story book I have has the sage, Joseph the Baker, declaring that “when we cannot find our ignorance, we can be sure we have lost our wisdom.”  And he tells this story: Once there was a fool who set out for the king’s palace.  Along the way, people pointed and jeered at the fool.  “Why should a man like you be going to see the king?” they laughed.  “Well, I’m going to be the king’s teacher,” answered the fool with great assurance…When the fool arrived at the palace, the king thought he would make short work and great jest of this man.  “Why do you dare disturb the king?” demanded His Majesty.  “I come to be royal teacher,” said the fool in a very matter-of-fact manner.  The king twisted with laughter.  “How can you, a fool, teach me?” 

            “You see,” said the fool, “already you ask me questions.”  The court froze silent.  The king gathered himself and stared at his ridiculous opponent.  “You have offered me a clever response, but you have not answered my questions!”   “Only a fool has all the answers,” came the reply, balanced on a shy smile.  “But, but,” now the king was sputtering, “What would others say if they knew the king had a fool for a teacher?”  The answer came, “Better to have a fool for a teacher than a fool for a king.”  When he heard this, the king, who was not a bad man, confessed, “Now I do feel like a fool.” “No,” said the man across from him, “it is only a fool who has never felt like one.”[4]

            I have wondered sometimes whether Christians don’t practice theological reflection more often, and have thought maybe it’s because they feel like fools when they try.  That is, lots of people I have met in churches I’ve been a part of don’t feel competent to think theologically about their lives.  They don’t feel like they know enough about the Bible, or theology, or Christian tradition and practice, so to attempt theological reflection makes them feel foolish.  Lots of people would rather stick with their areas of perceived expertise, and Christian tradition isn’t one of those areas for many of us. 

            I have two responses to that.  You may be right—you don’t know as much about Christian tradition as you wish you did.  In which case, you might want to consider deepening your familiarity with our tradition through reading theology, watching educational programming that will teach you about the tradition, reading the Bible, joining a study group of some kind, singing your way through the hymnal, reading works of literature with religious themes, talking with your friends and relatives about theology, and so forth.  Christian tradition through the ages is a rich treasure that has plenty of guidance for modern life.

            My other response is, you may be wrong about whether you know enough to engage in theological reflection.  If you know the barest outlines of some of the big narratives in the Bible, for example—creation, the temptation and fall, slavery in Egypt, the Exodus, the Exile, the homecoming, the birth of the messiah, the parables, the suffering and death of Jesus, the resurrection, the birth of the church at Pentecost—you’ve got plenty of material to work with to think about your own life.  How does your suffering connect with the suffering of Jesus?  How is your new beginning like a resurrection?    How do you respond to the presence of evil in the world?  You don’t have to be an expert to try to think about how the Christian tradition connects to and informs your own story.  In fact, it’s better not to have too much self assurance or theological certitude.  Only a fool has never felt like one.  It’s when we most need guidance that we stand to benefit the most from theological reflection.

            I wish I had the whole afternoon to talk over the methods of theological reflection Killen and de Beer propose.  I’ll just give you a brief outline, and encourage you to look into it or invent your own method.    If you start with a situation or incident, you write it out or speak it out using non-judgemental “Who/what/where/how” type language.  Then you become attentive to the physical sensations which point to one or two central feelings about the situation.  Remain with the feelings in your body.  Let them evoke images.  List images until one comes up that most captures the feelings around the situation, and use that image for the remainder of the reflection.

            One example given in the book was about a woman named Elaine who was volunteering at a homeless shelter but finding it so stressful that she would come home upset and with a sore, stiff back.  The image she wound up with was that it was like “having a steel rod across her shoulders.”      The next step after finding an image that speaks to the heart of the matter is to sit with the image and explore it.  Listen for how God might be present and calling.  Notice what is broken and sorrowing in the image.  What possibilities for newness or healing are present or implied?

            Next, go back to the image and ask where it might take you within the Christian tradition; brainstorm a list.  Ask if any of the pieces of tradition fits with the situation.  Elaine thought of Jesus saying that his “yoke is easy and [his] burden is light.”  Then begin a conversation between the meanings in the image and the tradition, asking questions like “What are the similarities?  What are the differences?  Is there a theme coming through both of them?  Is there a tension between them that is enlightening?  Elaine asked herself how the image of an easy yoke and light burden spoke to the negative of a heavy, rigid steel rod across the shoulders.

            Then you organize the results of the conversation between experience and tradition.  What insights or questions arise?  Does anything out of the conversation shed light or provide a new angle of vision on your thoughts, actions and feelings about the original situation?  Are you being called to concrete action?     How will you take the learnings of this reflection into daily living?  What will you do?  When will you begin?  Who will support you?

            The authors didn’t give us the end of Elaine’s story; we don’t know if she continued with her volunteer work with a new perspective, or found another ministry she would find less burdensome.  But I hope you can see the creative possibilities in going through this kind of process.         Even if you don’t use a formal step-by-step process or discussion, it’s good practice to find ways to slow down and reflect on the way our lives are unfolding, alone or with companions on your journey.  Even doing something as simple as paying attention to the song that is mysteriously stuck in your head and asking yourself if the Spirit has a message for you in it can yield insight that can yield new action. 

Life can be overwhelming; we may get to where we feel like we’re just sloshing around in our own little mud puddles without any particular purpose or meaning.  But God is present and calling, every day, every moment.  God yearns to guide us through our own insights and the wisdom of the ages as people of faith who have gone before us have found meaning in their lives.  Every single life has untold depth and promise and potential.  Your life is so much more than mud, rocks and slug trails.  It is shot through with Spirit, and you are indispensable in all that Is.  Listen to your life, listen to the wisdom of your spiritual heritage, actively seeking understanding.  Thich Nat Hanh states: “In each of us there is a seed of understanding.  That seed is God.”

[1] Brussat, Frederic and Mary Ann Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life  New York: Touchstone, 1996, p. 296

[2] Killen, Patricia O’Connell and de Beer, John  The Art of  Theological Reflection  New York: Crossroad, 1998, p. 4

[3] Ibid. p. 10-11

[4] ben Shea, Noah  Jacob the Baker: Gentle Wisdom for a Complicated World New York: Ballentine, 1989, p. 32-35